Final Fantasy Legend III

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We wrap up our reviews of the classic Final Fantasy Legend series with the last game of the bunch.

By Dexter Sy, Contributor

Final Fantasy Legend III was released in 1993 as the third title in the SaGa series for Game Boy. The game opens with a great sense of urgency. The Pureland Water Entity has caused a great flood that has engulfed the world in a disaster. So powerful is this entity that its powers have also reached into the past and future. The entity drew monsters to the land, and as the water began to rise, citizens panicked and great cities lay abandoned. As the party of four sets out for battle, the youths sent from the future to stop this entity find themselves in the position of collecting pieces of the great ship Talon in the past, present and future so that they may be able to defeat the entity which has brought destruction in all times.

Features:

Time Travel

Battery Back-Up

Two character class plus two evolutionary classes

For Game Boy

Final Fantasy Legend III stands out from the other two Final Fantasy Legend titles by using time travel as the core of its narrative. The game takes into account the player's actions. What is done in the past affects the present and what is done in the present affects the future. Gamers familiar with a later Square RPG, Chrono Trigger, may also find the premise familiar. And in many ways, Final Fantasy Legend III breaks away from its predecessors by exploring this subject matter and building many of the basic elements that Chrono Trigger later took on.

Several elements in the game remain true to the Final Fantasy Legend series. Character classes return, this time, with Human and Mutants. However, monster meat as well as bolt and screws received from defeating enemies allow players to transform their characters into Monsters and Robots, creating a rather unique way of changing the make-up of a party.

While paying homage to the previous two titles, Final Fantasy Legend III comes off as a completely new game in most other ways. Aside from the time traveling, the game pays very little attention to gaining levels, which is a relief to gamers who think the first two's emphasis of gaining levels detracted too much from the story.

Another aspect of the game that was done differently was magic. Players can now buy magic stones and equip them. Once equipped, characters will in effect learn the magic and the stone cannot be un-equipped. In other words, the stone has done its job, and to have another character learn the same magic, players will have to buy another one. In any case, this is a much better system and intimately much less stressful that the magic system in the original where magic books wear out and players need to have back-up copies of books in their inventory, just in case...

One of the more glaring problems is the item management system in the game. Once equipped, equipments only keep their prefix (i.e.: Iron) and it becomes a guessing game when the equipment menu lists three items with the same prefix and the user is not really sure which item is what. Another of the game's weakness is in the graphics department. In this installment, the visuals are only marginally improved from its predecessors. Furthermore, the soundtrack in the game has devolved somewhat from the apex reached in Final Fantasy Legend II. The scores are less dramatic, less emotional, and ultimately less effective than the previous works.

The Verdict

All in all, Final Fantasy Legend III stands out as a unique installment in the Final Fantasy Legend series. It is a complex RPG that is also accessible to novice players. The only drawbacks are the game's graphics, an imperfect soundtrack (still very good compared to other Game Boy games) and a poorly designed equipment screen that makes distinguishing equipped items of the same class almost impossible.

It should also be noted that Final Fantasy Legend was first released in 1990 by Squaresoft USA. The Game Boy rights was later picked up by Sunsoft in 1998 for a re-release and that is the copy I reviewed. And for the record, the games are identical, even though Sunsoft claimed on the box that the game was for use with Game Boy Color, it doesn't seem to be special colorized in anyway.